"What I'll be recommending is that we do a stocktake of what knowledge we already have in respect to agricultural science," he said.

He points out that there's a need to know where research is happening and where the gaps lie.

"We can work out from there if we should refocus our research, and then fund it appropriately, so that that which needs to be done on a continuous basis is never chopped and changed in Budgets."

Major General Jeffery delivered his message on World Soil Day, an event declared by the United Nations.

"If anything is important in this life for all of us, it's the soil. Everything comes from it and it's time we put far more priority into looking into it properly. Otherwise it'll come back and bite us."

He believes the most effective way to spruik that message is to children, through school kitchen gardens.

"The big key is when they get a microscope and look at some wet soil in a beaker and see the micro and the fungi all doing things, with the big bugs eating the little bugs," he explained.

"That's when you really hook them. And I think if we could get a garden into every school in the country, we would do much to reconnect urban Australia with its rural roots, and get more kids into agricultural science and farming."